A Slowly Sliding Trap
by Laqueus
Summary: "He smiled, and his smile brought no warmth. He gave advice, and his advice brought no comfort. He called the Stonekeepers an investment, and those words carried the hint of a threat. ('You're nothing more than one of my pieces to be used and disposed of.')" - A small series of vignettes on the Spirit, Void, and the Stonekeepers in his grasp. [SPOILERS FOR BOOK 7/FIRELIGHT]


**I.**  
The Void was a cold, stark presence, one that gently buffeted against the corners of a stonekeeper's mind. It felt crisp, clear and open, but in all the wrong ways - it was a crispness that was a hair's breadth away from being sharpness, a clearness that made you feel intangible, and an openness that allowed nothing to hide. It was like the open ocean, and you were a speck bobbing on the surface; all too easily swallowed up, with nothing caring and no fanfare.

Here was the domain of the Spirit.

He cut through the void like a shark cuts through water. Stonekeepers may pass through the Void, spend time in it, the Void easily closing around them and trying to wear them away, but the Spirit? The Spirit seemed to slice through it, as if he were a part of the Void itself that was moving around its own violation, like a child crawling under a blanket, whilst at the same time being his own entity.

He smiled, and his smile brought no warmth.

He gave advice, and his advice brought no comfort.

He called the Stonekeepers an investment, and those words carried the hint of a threat. (' _You're nothing more than one of my pieces to be used and disposed of._ ')

 **II.**  
In sleep, it is easier for the Void to slip itself around you, to pull you under, mixing with your mind and giving you dreams. When you're wrapped up in the safe blanket of sleep, it's not as easy to instantly spot what might be a Void dream and what might not be. Oh, you'll cotton on eventually, but by then it may be too late. The Spirit might have advised you, have moved you to a different position on the board, quietly withdrawing like a servant when you wake.

 **III.**  
All he has to do it wait.

Almost every Stonekeeper is consumed in the end, and no one knows this better than the Spirit.

Ah, if you resist? Well, the Spirit is old, and has done this sort of thing many, many times before. He's an old master at carefully prising you open, creeping inside, and hitting your weak points at just the right time to make you move.

 _It'd all be so much more easier if you had more power, wouldn't it?_

 _You could do so much more..._

 _That thing that you're having difficulty with would be easily solved with just a little extra help from me._

 _I only live to serve, Master._

 **IV.**  
The Amulet is a carefully concealed trap, coiled and ready to spring. Look how innocently it lies, hidden in such a marvellous way, all tense joints and pent up energy, wrapped in a shroud of patience. It is such a soft, subtle thing, slipping around your neck as smooth as snakeskin. You do not even notice you are trapped until it is too late, the bonds in place, the contract sealed, the Void beckoning softly. It is the best sort of trap, self-replicating, self-spreading. Those caught in its bonds call out to others, not in fear, but in praise. _"Look, look at what we can do with this marvellous stone!"_ they say, spreading more amulets to more people. And so the web extends, the trap replicates, and the Spirit amasses more pieces on his board.

 **V.**  
The Spirit jokes that he is a 'people person', but some element in the joke rings hollow. Perhaps it is not a joke, but something shaped like a joke, or an iceberg of a joke. You can see the tip, but underneath there is a world of context that changes it into something dangerous. The Amulet Spirit is a people person, but it is a kaleidoscope truth - look through it, twist the end a little, and there. The pieces have fallen, words twisted and bent to their maximum extent, so that now from a certain point of view, the Spirit is a "people person".

 _"An outgoing, gregarious person with good communication skills."_

Outgoing: Well, the Spirit is always meeting new people, and has known a great many number of people throughout his lifespan! (Whether or not those people are still alive is another question).

Gregarious: There has never been a time when the Spirit hasn't been in someone's company... albeit via proxy due to the stone. Why, when it comes down to it, there's never been someone who's spent more time around people than the Spirit!

Good Communication Skills: But of course! The Spirit finds that he is an excellent communicator, and has had so many people come to him for help! Words are such a pretty, pretty tool...

 **VI.**  
If there's one thing that the Amulet Spirit knows, it's this: you can learn a tremendous amount just by watching. For example, simply by watching the girl, Emily, he has learned so much more than she would ever tell him.

He knows that her father is a sore point ( _but then again,_ he muses, _anyone could tell that_ ). But as obvious as that fact is, it is a rich soil which had put forth a series of blooms: stoicism, a desire to not let anyone else die, and a strange, prickly sort of protectiveness. They were all excellent specimens, tools to be used, which the Spirit admired. It was the protectiveness that really intrigued him though. It was like a slowly expanding bubble that gradually encompassed those she met without them realising it. The Spirit wasn't even sure that Emily was aware of it herself; it wasn't as if she was making an oath of protection, no, it was a smaller, quieter thing that happened in the background. Once Emily had unconsciously been around you for a while, there it was. You were in her bubble of 'must protect'. It was almost quite amusing, the Spirit reflected, how she had even accepted the two elves into this little circle. Granted, the Spirit had had a little hand in that, dropping a message here, a dream there, but the rest of it had been all Emily. She had even tried to save Max, a cracked old piece if ever there was one. Granted she might as well have been trying to turn back the very hands of time with sheer willpower, but still...

How splendid, how... _useful_ /

 **VII.**  
The Spirit had never tried to speak to Vigo, especially after what happened with his son. No, Vigo was like an old wolf without a pack: too old, wary, experienced, and sad to be taken in by the Spirit. A shame, but just because the piece cannot hear you does not make them any less of a piece. You just have to spread your hand, use other methods.

Once or twice the Spirit had spoken to Luger, but quietly, when he was on the verge of sleep, planting ideas and dreams in his head on what to do and where to go. Didn't want to arouse his suspicions too much, if there was any room for suspicion left in that shattered mess of memories he called a head. He'd been such an excellent piece. Before he'd been broken (and sometimes things have to be broken and sacrificed in the grand scheme of things) he'd had been a useful fellow, so full of loyalty to the King he no longer recognised as his father, so willing to follow his every command.

Max. Ah, Max. Max had been such an easy catch, so full of vengeance and rage at the loss of Layra's life, so ready to go out and fight the world in her name! Little did he see that he was simply trying to ease his own pain, and that lack of sight made him so... malleable. In a way, he was almost ideal: powerful, distracted, and completely dependent on the Spirit to survive; his only ally and confidant. In a way it was a shame that he had to be disposed of, but no matter. By that point, the Spirit had another piece lined up to take his place.

The Spirit only spoke to Trellis once, after he'd been freed from Sybrian's control. Before that moment there'd simply been no need to do so; it would have been like instructing a robot who'd already been programmed to follow those same instructions as they went about doing them. Pointless. But once he'd been freed (and that _had_ been an unexpected development, the Spirit had to admit), with Emily refusing to kill him in the process (annoying, but not the end of the world*), measures had to be taken. If Trellis was going to go renegade, then it made sense to group him together with the other little cluster of rebels. Let him sit in the bed he'd made.  
*Not yet, at any rate.

During the Elf King's life (before he went and did the annoying thing that living things always do in the end: died), the Spirit often spoke with him. They were quite the conversationalists in fact! What a friend that elf had had in the guise of the Spirit. Why, sometimes he wondered what he'd ever do without the Spirit! And privately the Spirit would be pleased, as he continued to nurture this unhealthy dependency. When the Elf King's body eventually gave up and gave out, the Spirit slipped inside seamlessly. He'd been sitting on his throne at the time, without so much as a slight nod of head to indicate that he'd died and someone else was now running the show.

 **VIII.**  
Dependency: It was a shining tool that'd fallen into the Spirit's possession over the years, a byproduct of the Stonekeepers themselves, like bees producing honey. Because at the end of the day, each Stonekeeper gradually acquired a certain level of dependency upon their amulet; a dependency that danced very close to the realm of being unsound. It was like a giant, communal secret, an elephant in the room that few Stonekeepers chose to acknowledge, or even recognise. It was almost wonderful, the Spirit noted, how each Stonekeeper thought that they were the only one who had this strange wisp of a concern (easily blown away, easily ignored and forgotten about), how they thought that all the other Stonekeepers _weren't like this at all._

With a little care, a gentle poking here, a prod there, most Stonekeepers ended up crossing that line, becoming _too_ dependent. And when they were _too_ dependent, well, sooner or later a situation would arise which would require more power than they possessed in order to resolve it, and that was when the Spirit would strike with words as soft and as slippery as silk.

 **IX.**  
In Alledia, there is nothing that raises quite as much panic as an out-of-control stonekeeper, a reputation and feeling the Spirit has worked on building up for many, many generations. After all, if you can upset the enemy psychologically, then the battle is half-won already!

In this state, an out of control Stonekeeper might as well by made out of clay; their biology warps, changes, their flesh boiling and bubbling as their fragile body is overloaded with the amulet's magic. If left to their own devices, the unfortunate Stonekeeper either melts into a rather unfortunate mess, or incinerates themself from the sheer force of magic. Sometimes even both, if they're particularly unlucky. When the Spirit was young (and the Spirit _was_ young once, hard as it is to believe), his methods less unrefined, this was the most common outcome of an unlucky stonekeeper. But as the Spirit grew, so too did his methods, and he learned that with a careful bit of sculpting, well, _anything_ was possible. Nowadays he only lets Stonekeepers melt or incinerate themselves if they're particularly useless and unfruitful, the Spirit having long grown tired of trying to grow what is not there.

In the same way a painter might have a favourite paintbrush, so too does the Spirit have a couple of preferred forms for his Stonekeepers. They're ones that have proved useful and resilient over the years: being giant, or being on fire. Sometimes even both! Of course, you should never solely rely on any single given thing, and different circumstances call for different shapes, but most of the time these two forms are the Spirit's favourites.

 **X.**  
To her, the Amulet is simply a means to an end, a way of both protecting and restoring her family. It may be the magical equivalent of walking around with a gun strapped to your chin, barrel digging softly into the flesh of your head, but still she accepted it. The Spirit can appreciate that sort of straightforwardness, and enjoys finding out what lies beneath. What _lies_ beneath. Sometimes a straightforward person is simply that, straightforward. But other times that straightness conceals a whole twisting and turning mess of a path underneath, all wrapped up and warped into something that ploughs straight ahead.

And with time, the Spirit finds that oh-ho, what a mess of brambles and tangles there is within. How merrily it shall burn.

How merrily she burns.

 **XI.**  
The fire engulfs her, and for a moment she is a small human outline within the blaze. There is an expression on her face, one that the Spirit has seen mirrored on many stonekeepers before her. It is not, as you would expect, one one solely of fear; no, instead it's a strange sort of understanding, laced with a small hint of sadness, as if they know something has gone so badly wrong that the situation is irreparable and the only thing you can do is accept it.

The Spirit imagines that is it the sort of expression of someone who has jumped willingly off a cliff.

The magic courses through her, but just before it reaches boiling point (where her flesh begins to bubble and seethe), the Spirit gives it a gentle nudge; and the magic melts like a blister bursting, flowing around her, engulfing her. Now there is nothing but fire, heaving, rising, teasing itself into a final shape. Look now, the fire is holding a loose sort of outline, pointing itself into a beak, fanning and spreading itself into wings.

It is done, the human stonekeeper gone, a phoenix in her place.

The Spirit can't help but feel a spark of amusement at what comes next: Trellis forced to flee into the trees, Emily in hot (heh) pursuit, former allies pitted against one another in a small demonstration of what the Spirit has planned for the world.

As the pair disappear into the outside world, the Spirit leans back, filled with satisfaction at a task well done.

He smiles.

Things are about to get very, _very_ interesting


End file.
